Now suddenly instead of one set of male eyes on me, I felt the heat of three, a highly unhappy heat. Griffin had given up the protection of his pillow to join forces with his comrades, and Zeke said disapprovingly, “That was not appropriate, Trixa. I’m disappointed in you.”
Zeke thought I was inappropriate. Zeke. And he was right. Insinuating that a man’s penis was no big deal, accidentally or not, wasn’t definable. The dictionaries held no words strong enough to label that mistake. Catastrophic fell miles short of covering that error. I hadn’t lived as long as I had without learning the massively sensitive issue all males, human, païen, or gods, shared. This simply wasn’t my day. I couldn’t lie well and I couldn’t avoid a mistake so basic a high school cheerleader could’ve taught me a course on it on this miserable day—who had a PhD compared to me when I couldn’t figure out how to open the door to the damn school. No doubt because the handle was phallic shaped.
I apologized, throwing my principles out the window. I did it quickly and hurriedly buried my attention back in the Jell-O. That was the best thing to do when you inadvertently or carelessly . . . semantics . . . didn’t show the mighty penis the respect it deserved. Get past the moment as expeditiously as possible so everyone could pretend it had never happened. Leo, of course, wouldn’t let it go. He’d gone on and on. This day wasn’t getting any better. When you’ve been beaten up by a demon in your own bedroom and that was the high point, it was one seriously bad day. Finally I’d told him to either kill me or wait for Eligos to do it; I couldn’t stand the guilt trip anymore.
“I’m going down to the chapel,” he said. It’s difficult to speak without moving your lips or unclenching your teeth, but he managed.
“And who are you going to pray to, Loki?” I snapped back. I was sorry, but I was getting less sorry all the time.
“Myself, and you’d better hope I’m not listening.” He slammed the door behind him.
I snorted. Men. Gods. Gods-on-hiatus. All the same.
“You’re in trouble.” Zeke was grinning.
Griffin looked amused as well until I threw him under the bus without a second thought when I asked Zeke with all innocence, “Aren’t you pissed at Griffin right now?”
“Oh yeah.” Zeke by now had supplanted me in my position on the edge of the bed, and had been automatically wetting and wringing a washcloth in the basin to pass back and forth to his partner. Griffin was working on getting all the dried blood out of the creases of his hands and the raw patches of scraped skin over his knuckles. It reminded me how fortunate we were he was still around. Taking on demons without backup wasn’t conducive to that. Zeke was as aware of that as I was. He had been momentarily distracted, but he was back on the scent now. “You are never getting out of the house again. Ever. Ever. If I can find a goddamn hamster ball big enough to put you in, I will. You’re an idiot. A selfish, clueless idiot. Eden House thought you could guide me? Thought you were smart enough to partner up with me? Hell, the demons probably didn’t even set a trap. I’ll bet you tripped and fell into one’s open fucking jaws. Maybe it wasn’t even demons. Maybe a pack of poodles mauled you.”
Tickling the bottom of his foot through the sheet, I said to Griffin’s betrayed expression, “He’s speaking to you again. That’s something, isn’t it? You can thank me later.”
That didn’t happen.
I wasn’t surprised. Those thrown under buses aren’t often grateful, but with those who jump under them of their own accord, that’s not always true. But I didn’t find that out until later—when Rosanna showed up.
We took Griffin and Zeke back to the bar with us. AMA—against medical advice—but since medical advice hadn’t cured him, and Zeke had, it hadn’t been much of a deterrent. While Griffin had finished cleaning up, he’d also told us about his solo demon hunts, every detail. He’d found new hunting grounds we hadn’t known about—some bars, some hotels . . . and one in particular that hosted pageants for people who wanted to dress up their four-year-old like a ten-dollar hooker. The poor kids couldn’t sell their souls to get a normal childhood, but their mom could sell hers to ensure her little Savannah won that crown. I hadn’t thought of that one. Griffin had been clever, too clever, but now we’d know where to look for him if he did something this suicidal again. There had been five of them, the demon safaris . . . The sixth had been the trap. Five solo demon killings—he’d had every reason to look exhausted in the past week or so as it was catching up with him. He didn’t have every reason to be alive, however. He was good, but fate is capricious. If he’d been trolling alone and come across Armand before Armand had been turned into a demon-flavored milk shake on my floor or had run into another higher-level demon like Armand, there was every chance Griffin wouldn’t have been around long enough for the demons to bother with a trap. That Eli had saved Griffin might not classify as a miracle in the holy sense, but it was wholly unexpected and I didn’t want to depend on it again. As for assuming most of the demons would wise up and stay in Hell and out of Cronus’s reach . . . First, they couldn’t stay there forever. Eventually they’d run out of souls to eat. Second, lower-level demons weren’t that intelligent. They didn’t know when they were profoundly outclassed or they didn’t have the brain cells to believe it. They wouldn’t hide long.
All of that made it an easy decision. Until Griffin was back in top fighting form, he and Zeke could stay with me. It wouldn’t be the first time the bar was a makeshift recovery room for them. After the last time, I’d learned my lesson and added a spare bedroom downstairs. Granted, you could only fit a single-sized bed in there and had to crawl up that bed from the foot as there was no room to walk beside it, but it was, as I told Griff and Zeke, all theirs—a home away from home.
“You told the doctor you had the best accommodations possible for me. Luxurious, you said. And when he still wouldn’t sign the discharge papers, you all but smuggled me out of the hospital, and for this?” Griffin asked, looking much more healthy, bright eyed and bushy tailed, than he had a right to, aside from the bruise on his face. Yes, they’d definitely given him the good pain pills.
“Considering you were hanging in a foyer like a side of beef in a butcher’s freezer yesterday, I think this is a step up, so don’t complain. It’s the only guest room I have and I fixed it up months ago especially for you two. Be grateful,” I ordered.
“Didn’t this used to be the storage closet?” Zeke stuck his head in and looked around. “Didn’t you keep the toilet paper and cleaning supplies for the customer bathrooms in here? And the vomit bucket and mop?”
Picky. Picky. Picky.
“It’s this or sleep in those bathrooms. You choose. And as those look like the ones in a men’s prison, I wouldn’t pick that option myself.”
“Speaking of prisons.” Griffin lifted his wrist and jangled metal. The cuff was off his ankle and now around his wrist which, in turn, was cuffed to Zeke’s. “I know I’ve been an idiot. I know I wasn’t honest and that’s the last thing I want to be with you . . . dishonest . . . but this feels like a kinky sex movie. Could you take them off now?”
“No.” Zeke didn’t bother to waste a second thinking about it as he made a face. “It smells like ammonia in here . . . and ass. Ammonia and sweaty ass.”
“Sorry, princess. I think you’ll survive.” This was what it was like to have ungrateful, spoiled children. I’d have to remember that in the future.
Griffin, not interested in the discussion of the smell of ass, sweaty or otherwise, tried again. “Zeke, I promise I’ll . . .”
“No.” Zeke didn’t wait for the rest of the promise. “Start crawling. I’m tired.”
Griffin exhaled, the guilt back in his face. It wasn’t the guilt of doing things he’d never done, being what he no longer was. This was a guilt he deserved and for behavior modification’s sake, I didn’t pat him sympathetically on the shoulder. There were no Lone Rangers in this bar and I wanted him to remember that. “I’ll bet you are,” he said. “I know you are.” Along with the guilt, you could see him picking up Zeke’s exhaustion like the empath he was and wearing it with his own emotions and sensations. “You didn’t sleep last night. You didn’t sleep this morning. You stole that scalpel from God knows where, keeping me safe, watching out for me.”